


Night Before

by SmallestGrackle



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Drinking & Talking, Drug Use, Eventual Smut, F/M, Feelings, First Kiss, Fo4 Song Prompt, Gen, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, Romance, Smut, War, fluff smut?, i don't even know if it's smut tbh, it's like, more feels than smut, okay fine, very mild smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 08:53:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5579212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SmallestGrackle/pseuds/SmallestGrackle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Minutemen and the rest of Nora's crew have braced themselves, holing up in the Castle while an attack from the Institute seems imminent. Nerves and restlessness and exhaustion have gripped everyone. Unable to sleep, Nora worries over her burden as General. She leaves her bunk to seek solace with a friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night Before

**Author's Note:**

> -Toward the end, there's a POV switch and it causes a name-change that is intentional for the character. I tried not to make it too jarring. If you know the character, it will make sense, I think.  
> -The Sole Survivor is Nora because that's the default in-game name that lots of writers use. I did not describe her much physically, which is also intentional. So many of us have different headcanons for our sole survivors' physical appearance, and I didn't want to make it so people couldn't read this with theirs in mind.  
> -For anyone interested, I wrote the scenes taking place in Hancock's garret with this song in mind: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh97e3dshhY  
> -I am writing a book, if anyone is interested: <http://smallestgrackle.tumblr.com/post/149302058094/ill-be-posting-my-book-under-read-mores-over>

* * *

 

She had been told to go and rest. Together, they had worked on their ramparts and armaments since sun-up, and now little campfires shone in all corners of the wide courtyard. Nora watched the full moon through the glassless window by her bunk. The sky was clear, stars shimmering in silver belts across heavens that she had never quite been able to see before the war, when the world still glittered with city lights.

Her bed was an extra one chosen at random, and she shifted and turned on the mattress, restless. Ronnie had given her a key to the General’s Quarters, but she never considered it hers. Nora didn’t feel like anyone’s general, and the empty luxury of a king-sized bed and a set of matching furniture seemed absurd before the hell that was sure to come for them all tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

Before she had been sent back from the Institute, the old man – _Shaun. Shaun, your son –_ had told her what was to come. She knew by the way he’d spoken of them all – the Minutemen, the Railroad, all others above ground – that he was forcing her to choose sides just before the reckoning that would be sent. She had felt it in his voice, saw by the eyes that looked so like his father’s. It was a plea, and a warning. And her choice to stand with the Commonwealth would change nothing, she knew. The Institute would carry through.

Nora propped herself on an elbow and reached for the mug of clean water she’d left on the floor. The Castle had gone quiet now, the clamor of preparation done with, but when she got up to go to the window, she still heard scant voices and hums, all filled with nerves. She saw the outline of MacCready’s shoulders as he hunched over the heat of a fire with a rifle in his lap, and Preston was slumped in a chair across the way, the brim of his hat dipped down over his eyes. His mouth was still and slack with sleep.

Her mind wandered as she leaned against the cool stone sill, and it wasn’t long before she was looking for him.

 

He hadn’t said a word when Nick had taken her bowl after supper and urged her off to sleep. She had looked across the coals then to find black eyes studying her from beneath the tricorn hat, but he’d only watched her as she stood to go find her bed. He did something odd with his face before she turned, a half smile that looked pained before melting away, and then he was counting out shells again, slipping them into slots on the gunbelt in his lap.

Minutes later, as she was pulling off her thick canvas jacket, the ghoul had appeared in the doorway of her barracks, a half-full bottle of bourbon tucked in the crook of his elbow and a hunting rifle held loose by the barrel. “Sleep tight,” he’d muttered then, and the rifle was set against the stone doorframe, a small token of protection despite the various arms she’d already shoved under her bunk.

“You too, Hancock,” she’d told him, looking for more words to say, looking for pause, but then he was gone.

 

Now, she grabbed her coat and pulled her combat boots on, leaving them unlaced as her eyes scanned the courtyard, wandering up to the lofts they’d built along the walls. It must have been eleven or twelve by then, and all still awake were likely those who never slept or those who worried. Death was always close and very real for people of the Commonwealth. They faced it every day, but not like this. Ambushes and scattered raids were nothing like the carnage the Institute would bring. Hundreds of people could die tomorrow and in the following days, and hundreds more at the Old North Church when the Institute came for the Railroad. More would fall at her other settlements then, and finally at Sanctuary and Goodneighbor, when the Institute synths would deal their last blows to cripple the Commonwealth beneath them.

_Stop it._

She gnawed at the inside of her cheek when she spotted him. Hancock’s silhouette was unmistakable against the dim haze of lantern light, and the rifle he’d left her was taken along as she abandoned her room. MacCready saw her trekking through the weeds toward the far wall of the fortress, and they exchanged nods. The gesture was spare but heavy with recognition, a moment long in its weight. Mac had shown up that very evening to join the fight, and she didn’t know why, but his loyalty amazed her, here in the end. She’d been a little sad to see him at the gates, her friend who could have stayed out of it all, who could have kept safe somewhere else.

_This isn’t the end. You could win._

It was Nora who had assembled these ranks, who rebuilt the Castle and gathered them all here, who gave Preston her approval for war. And to her great sadness, she knew they would all stand with her. They would not desert. Regardless of the stalwart speeches she’d given that morning, part of her wished she had never brought them to this place, never met any of them at all, especially those she loved best.

She found him brooding on the scrapwood balcony of one of the lofts, propped back on two legs of an old chair with his boot set on the railing. He didn’t know she was there. Her eyes had just cleared the last step when she stopped her ascent, silent as she watched the embers sizzle at the tip of the cigarette he held to his scarred lips. Smoke hissed into the gloom, and he set the cigarette in the corner of his mouth while he went for the bottle on the floor.

His ratty red coat was off, hung over the back of the chair, and he sat there in his t-shirt and jeans. Without the coat, he seemed smaller somehow, younger, even with the map of thick scarring that rippled his skin. She imagined he’d smell like dust storms and cigarettes and himself, with a mouthful of whiskey and mentats, and gunpowder under his nails. It was an odd thought, one that gave her pause, and she had retreated back a step before he caught her.

His head turned with the wariness of a cat and, for a second, his eyes changed when he saw her, vulnerable and blinking. Then he gave her his good sluggish smile. He had a gap between his front teeth and it made all of his grins craggy and boyish, full of trouble. He pushed his tricorn farther down on his head out of habit. “Hey, you.”

Nora ambled up the last few stairs and resettled the rifle strap on her shoulder. “How you holding up?”

“Well, I been drinkin’ a while and haven’t fallen off the balcony yet.” He set the bottle down by the leg of his chair and flicked the spare ashes from the butt, watching her. “Feel like I should be asking you, though, from the look of it.”

She picked at splinters on the railing with a fingernail, glancing off at the many campfires below before meeting his dark eyes. “Can’t sleep.”

Hancock gave her a scant little nod and was quiet a moment before inviting her closer with a jerk of his head. When she set the rifle down and sat herself on the steel ammunition container by his chair, he took a last drag on his cigarette and handed it down to her. Then he set the bourbon bottle in her lap, ever the gent. Generosity always was Hancock’s gig.

The air was crisp, but not chilling, and she shrugged at her jacket until it fell just below her shoulders, letting the sleeves engulf her fingers. They sipped and talked, about anything but Shaun and the Institute, anything but war. He made her laugh more than a couple times before the cigarette was gone and the whiskey had warmed her head, and soon, they had moved back under the roof, their backsides sinking into the broken cushions of a torn up loveseat someone had set up near the mattress on the floor.

Hancock helped himself to another sip from the bottle between them and looked over at his stacks of bullet boxes in one corner of the tiny room. His shotgun accompanied a scoped assault rifle against the wall, and there was a small collection of knives and molotovs left beside the bed. A string of old holiday bulbs had been stapled to the ceiling, lighting his quarters with a soft, sleepy glow. It took him a while to speak again, gazing out beyond the balcony and across the courtyard to the wall on the other side. “So, you gonna camp up here with Deacon, huh? Tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” she said after a second’s pause. “It’ll be us with the riflemen here, and Mac’s putting his squad on the eastern side. I’m not as good on the ground, not like you. You’re with Strong, aren’t you?”

He cracked a grin and nodded against the rim of the bottle, closing it up with a twist of his gnarled fingers. “And Cait.”

“Good. I’m glad Cait’ll be with you. She’ll have your back. Just, you know, be sure the both of you stay out of Strong’s way.” When she met his eye, he had put the bourbon down and was observing her with a quiet she wasn’t used to him having. It was comforting, though her nerves were unsettled, and she sat back, unable to stop herself talking. “I, uh…when I followed the voice – Shaun’s voice – at the Insitute, it brought me to this room. It was so…white. Clean.”

The ghoul’s face changed then, and he crossed his arms over his chest, listening. She had told everyone, briefly, what had happened there, but not with any detail like this, not the heavy things that had happened in the moments between.

“There was a, I don’t know, like a cage almost. The walls were some kind of glass, and there was–” She looked up, staring at nothing. “There was a boy inside, playing. I thought it was him, Hancock. I wanted it to be him so badly, but when he saw me, something was wrong. He… he didn’t look…I don’t know, something was wrong.” She felt heat building in the wells of her eyes and shook her head once to clear it. “I must have seemed crazy, telling him I was his mom, that I was there to get him, bring him home. He was scared.” She sniffled once, but the tears never made it past her lower lids as she took a breath, scooted and angled herself more toward Hancock. “Anyway. Of course it wasn’t him. Synth. Poor kid.”

Hancock didn’t know what to say. She saw him struggling, looking at his hands. “That’s fucked up,” he managed finally, and, oddly enough, she choked out a wounded laugh.

“Yeah. Yeah, it is. Evil, really,” she mumbled, and she rubbed at the back of her neck, glancing again at the darkness outside. Something touched her other hand by her thigh and she almost moved it, but it was Hancock’s. He’d brushed a few fingers against hers, and when she flipped her wrist over, he settled the rest of his hand into her upturned palm and squeezed. It might have been in friendship, or something else, but she realized it didn’t matter just then. The thing that had been troubling her for days came tumbling out, and she realized in saying it that its weight had been staggering. “John, this man who’s sending an army in to kill us all…he’s my son.” She looked hard at him. “He’s my _son._ We could all die, any of us. Tomorrow. Tonight.”

“Yeah, we could.” he told her. Then he leant forward, until the edge of his hat was close enough to blur within her vision. The grit of his voice was somber, but reassuring. “Ain’t your fault.”

 

When the silence came, Hancock let go of her hand and reached over the arm of the couch to retrieve the little wooden chest he kept on the floor, unpainted hickory and about the size of a shoebox. It must have been someone’s once, for keepsakes or jewelry. She watched as he rooted around in it, seemingly perplexed. “Can’t decide if I want uppers or downers,” he grumbled, and she saw that he’d filled it with a scattering of chems, intact cigarettes, and some curious knick-knacks he’d picked up in the wastes. One of them was a semi-essential wingnut he’d swiped from the Prydwen, something they had both laughed about after the fact. Another was a tiny, delicate model of a sail boat. She’d have to ask him about that one later.

If they lived.

“I mean. I don’t have to, it’s cool.”

By his look, Nora realized he must have thought she was criticizing his collection rather than simply studying it. He seemed unready when she eyed the inhaler of Jet he was turning over in his hand and asked, “Do you think I could try some of that?”

She said it on an impulse, without thought or delay, and the ghoul looked long at her, evidently taken aback. She’d been given Med-X in an emergency before, and her leniency toward Mentats was clear in the fact that she kept a tin for herself and sometimes took one when she was on shift to keep watch, but never Jet. Jet was a _user’s_ chem, Preston had told her once. Its affects were disorienting and its origins questionable, though its properties didn’t rank with the stigma of drugs like Psycho or Fury. At any rate, it surely wasn’t something she sought to add to her daily routine, later on.

_If I live._

“What’s mine is yours.” He meant it. She could tell. “It’ll knock you on your ass, though, if you haven’t—”

“Will it help me sleep, after?”

There was hesitation, just long enough for her to catch it as his lips creased to a grim line and his gaze blinked away and back again. “Helps me.” In that, he had shared with her something he didn’t wish to say more about, and Nora left it there.

The inhaler had looked flimsy nestled among the box’s other contents, but when Hancock shook it briefly and handed it to her, it was heavier than expected. Even sealed up, the smell of the stuff was pungent, not entirely rancid, but gamy and feculent, with a sharp funk of decaying sod. She watched him tensely from the corner of her eye as she slipped the nozzle between her lips and felt around for the depressor. Ever helpful, he placed his hand over her fingers.

“Breathe,” he told her, “slow.” When she did, he pressed something, there was a faint _click_ , and her eyes shut tight as cool vapor bathed her lungs. “Hold it,” she heard him say as the inhaler was lowered again, but the sound was far away. There was a burning at the back of her throat that receded as quickly as it came, and then her heart rate was increasing. Instinctively, she thrust an arm out and got him by the sleeve of his t-shirt. He didn’t move. Then he did, but it was slow, too slow, and she thought about panicking until an exquisite warmth bloomed in her skull and she let the breath go.

Her exhale hit the air in a hazy white stream that hung in space for much too long, ebbing and curling on itself, dissipating to a thin mist of tiny beads that sparkled, one by one, as they reflected the light in the room. A hand was dead still against her back, she felt it through her jacket.

There were hushed voices in the courtyard below them, but it came to her ears as a drawn-out whisper that faded to a long vocal hum. It droned with the lazy falling of the droplets in the air, and she dug her fist into the fabric of Hancock’s sleeve, dazzled. Awed.

Beyond the walls, the shrill call of cicadas murmured in patches of grass between the dunes and her thoughts writhed, rampant, in her head. Fleetingly, she wondered if the enemy would attack first from the beach, or maybe they would go for the western side, where the wall was weakest.

_‘We could all die, any of us.’_

Which of her own would go down first? Who would she lose? The hand slid delicately across her shoulder blade. Her heart rang in her ears. Who would she lose?

_‘Tomorrow. Tonight.’_

When she looked for him, his eyes were very close. She could just see the irises, murky and clouded in a gray almost black. Time was coming back to her and she knew, very suddenly, that she wanted to be held.

“Hey,” he rasped near her ear. “You good?”

Nora felt herself nodding, fingertips tingling and her eyes drifting closed again. After a while, she heard him take a hit for himself, felt him shift and relax into the cushions, felt the touch of his shoulder against her arm. The string of lights above them looked as they would through a foggy window, with long, glaring rays of twinkling color.

They existed in the company of one another with an ease they didn’t question, in a dream of white vapor and night sounds.

 

.....

 

The hour was growing late. Nick Valentine had glanced up from the ashes of a fire to see Nora’s shadow as she ascended the stairs to Hancock’s garret on the wall, but he didn’t follow. He gazed up that way for a long time after, though, hands shoved into the pockets of his trench coat as he mulled over, for the umpteenth time, just what sort of man Hancock really was. Eventually, he’d let it go, bidding Mac a good night’s sleep and ambling off into the dark halls of the Castle.

Somewhere, Preston had woken and was patrolling the perimeter outside the walls, too stressed to slumber. Piper had wanted to stay up, but she’d passed out sitting up against the door to the armory, Dogmeat’s head in her lap. Every now and again, she whimpered softly, her fingers twitching in the German shepherd’s fur.

Deacon had set up a sniper’s perch above that faced west toward the old city. He lay on his stomach, hunkered over his rifle and mumbling oddball comments into his radio on a frequency that likely no one was listening to. He was eventually joined by Cait, who said nothing, but just wanted to sit with him, with someone, away from the company of her own head.

“Let me guess,” he said. “You’ll sleep when you’re dead.”

She had smiled then, her hand reaching out to pat his shoulder roughly before she sat back and soon fell asleep with his jacket rolled up behind her head.

 

.....

 

Nora watched him sedately as a pale cloud billowed between his marred lips and then disappeared again, huffed into his throat.

Somehow, they had ended up on the other side of the room, John sitting on the edge of the mattress with elbows on his knees and Nora facing him, cross-legged on the floor. Both his hat and her jacket lay abandoned on the couch. In one hand, he held the inhaler, and he played idly with it while she muttered quiet things to him, about life, about memories and duty and dread. She seemed so close just now. He could see the faint line of a stretch mark peeking out from the low neck of her tank top. He could smell the smoke of campfires in her hair.

He wanted her.

It wasn’t something he ever questioned or analyzed. He had wanted her for a long time, so long that it couldn’t be brought up now, but at least she was here with him, before the brawl, her eyes soft with the high and her voice as honest as he’d ever heard it.

That was it, he guessed, the first thing that had struck him about her, way back when she came to Goodneighbor. She was straight-up and honest, startingly so. Like him. And, like him, she worried terribly about her decisions, about the lives of the people who followed her. _She shouldn’t,_ he thought. _She’s the best of us._

As she was coming down from her hit, his eyes fell to the space between them. Her fingers were touching his, wandering lightly across his hard, damaged knuckles without a stitch of reluctance or uncertainty. A wind gusted gently through the loft, goosebumping her shoulders.

“Thanks,” she was saying, and his thoughts were murky as he met her eyes. The hand that fidgeted with the inhaler went still. “For letting me…”

“What?” John hunched forward some, looking close at her, gathering his brow. “Letting you talk? Letting you be real for a second? What?” There wasn’t much she could say to that, and he shook his head slowly. “Don’t gotta thank me for treating you like a person.”

Something happened. She’d been looking him right in the eyes, but then her gaze faltered, dropping slightly, flitting here and there across the wreckage of his face. He thought to fill the silence with some trivial, nothing remark, but he didn’t have time. Nora’s posture tensed, her back a little straighter as she drifted into him.

 

His eyes closed at the touch of her lips. They were warm, nestled into the corner of his mouth in a kiss that hadn’t been planned. It was a tender thing, almost timid, gently done and unbearably brief. There was a soft sound as they parted, and then her breath hitched when he found her lips again, drawing her back before it could be over. He needed to hold onto her, wanted nothing else, and the inhaler slipped from his hand and clattered to the floor as his palms went to her face, anchoring himself to stop his head spinning, grazing her skin with his thumb.

She kissed him as if in a fever, her mouth slow and gentle and wanting, fretful as the fingers that clung to his arms. She kissed him like he was going to leave. His hand was on the small of her back then, easing her, and she lifted herself cautiously over his lap, her knees on either side of his hips as he pressed his face into the curve of her neck.

_I’m not runnin’, not from you._

Her pulse was an anxious drum against him, but he felt her calming, slowing down as his arms wrapped around her back. _‘Tomorrow,’_ she had said earlier, but he didn’t care about tomorrow. He didn’t care about the rest of his life unless this person in her too-big cargo pants and muddy boots was in it, every fucking day.

“C’mere,” he mumbled finally. “C’mere, look at me.” When she did, her breaths were shallow, halting. Hoarsely, he reminded her, “You’re high, kiddo,” and he dragged the wild hair out of her eyes with his little finger, half-regretting that he said it. He didn’t want her to go away, but it needed saying.

“I know,” she said. Her eyes were all fire. “But I promise I’m still…I’m _here,_ okay? I’m here.” And then she was falling into him and the surface beneath them dwindled away and everything else disappeared.

He wanted her sharp little sighs and the tremble in her breath when he touched her hips, her stomach. He wanted her need and her guarded fragility and the way she tugged his shirt over his head and drew him close to her like he was whole, like he was enough. Her arms came up as he slipped his hands beneath her tank top and over her ribs, the flesh dimpled by the snugness of her bra, and she peeled them both off for him, impatient.

It made her pause, when he looked at her. In the night air, she was all gooseflesh, but warm under his hands, hands that looked so different from any part of her. Her body was silhouetted against the low gleam of the lights and it was a moment too long and then he was kissing her again, heavier. She murmured quietly against his mouth when he grazed his knuckles over her navel and down, feeling her shudder, pressing his hand between her legs. It was impossible to keep on this way, and they clung to each other as they shifted, moving quick.

 She was fretting with a button, a zipper, but then John hooked his fingers into her pockets and yanked her britches down to her knees, nearly dragging her halfway off the mattress. Neither of them halted nor cared. They had evacuated all clothing and became lost in each other, unraveled with every breath and seeking hand, oblivious to themselves but for their delirium when her body arched fiercely against his fingers, when he edged inside her and felt her cold nose on his shoulder, when he brought her close and the surge of the ocean beyond the wall muffled the gasping sounds of their undoing. They were long gone then, both of them.

 

War could wait.


End file.
